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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28574883">first cursed among the chaos</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaksykid/pseuds/peaksykid'>peaksykid</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Blaseball (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Oneshot, depiction of panic attack-like incident, hey whatever happened to all those other curses the thieves were supposed to get huh, set just after Tillman's revival but before s10dX</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:40:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,008</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28574883</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaksykid/pseuds/peaksykid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tillman Henderson, back from the dead, encounters what's happened in Charleston while he was gone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>first cursed among the chaos</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No one on the team would look him in the eye, and Tillman couldn’t stand it. He still felt the cold in his bones, the shivering darkness down his spine from the depths of the Trench, and though it was dry by now, it felt like dark water was dripping from his hair, down through the fabric of his jacket, and deep into the ground.</p><p>The ground felt unsteady under his feet, as if he still was trying to find his land legs, and he lurched forward when he stepped into the locker room, overcompensating for a vestigial sand under his feet, a current he couldn't place. He caught a flash of his own face in the mirror next to the door, and saw how wild and death-blue his eyes shone, how cracked and dry the crabshell across his face looked, how strange and how out of place.</p><p>He looked like a fucking <em>wreck</em>, he thought, the type that you’d stare at passing on the highway. The type you gawk at wide-eyed, and exclaim to whatever sap sat next to you in the car, “good lord, what is that thing?!" He ran his tongue over the sharp edge of his teeth and glared at the back of one of the Thieves’ heads.</p><p>No one was <em> looking at him </em> and it made something in him curl and turn over in rage and, oddly, in fear. Like if someone didn’t acknowledge him he would fade out, flicker into the darkness and sink deep and low into the water again. He ran his hand over the hard red patch of carapace on his forearm to try and ground himself just for a moment.</p><p>The Thieves were fussing around, moving things around the clubhouse, orbiting something he couldn’t determine. The little penguin one shoved pillows into a corner, one of the Gameses (he couldn’t remember which was which) pulled the door to outside shut with a wooden cane. Esme Ramsey sat down on the ground and pulled the short little girl—Twofer, he’d heard someone call her, but whatever—close to her, a worried look on her face.</p><p>Still no one even paid him the slightest attention. Tillman was starting to get mad. Black-behind-the-eyes mad, punch-a-wall mad. This couldn’t all be because of fucking <em> Jaylen</em>, could it? They didn’t even <em> like </em> her. And they had just been talking to him a bit before—starting shit with him, sure, but that was the normal method of conversation. He could deal with that.</p><p>But now they were fucking ignoring him and he couldn’t tell why. He glanced down and his shoes were still on his feet, which didn’t even make any sense—they had been trying to steal them every five seconds for the past day—he couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed Stu Trololol by the shoulder and turned her around as she rushed by him carrying some sort of earmuff contraptions in her arms. They tumbled to the ground with a soft clunk.</p><p>“What’s the big fuckin deal, huh? Why are you guys acting so weird around me?” Tillman didn’t expect to see <em> panic </em>in her eyes, instead of annoyance, and it took him aback. He stumbled. Stu fumbled and tried to pick the earmuffs up from the ground, and didn’t respond to him, just started quickly trying to get them into the hands of the other Thieves, muttering under her breath—“should be starting any second now—”</p><p>“Did you not hear me??” Now Tillman was just bewildered. He felt the fuzzy form of Howell Franklin hurrying behind him and turned around on his heels to face him and saw him jump, ignoring him yet again, and take cover under a desk.</p><p>He was starting to feel hot behind the ears with confusion. “What the fuck is going on?” He moved towards the door. He noticed the majority of the Thieves had those weird earmuffs on. “And why is the door shut, it’s so fucking hot in here—”</p><p>—Tillman pulled the door open just as he heard Stu behind him say, in a strained whisper—“Tillman, <em> don’t—” </em></p><p>Somewhere behind him the clock struck noon.</p><p>A <em> sound </em> hit him like a physical force and Tillman stumbled back, head rattled, something behind his eyes flashing red. He had spent the past year and a half in a place where there was no sound, no messages, nothing but water, and even beyond that, this was the loudest thing he could ever remember hearing. He felt like his skin was unglued and loose from his bones, like something in all his molecules had started vibrating at just the right frequency to absolutely throw him off guard, storm cloud and rotation above and crushing and calling with red red eyes and glow and sharpness like rocks like nuclear bombs like the end of the world the end of all things and it kept going, incessant, constantly, overwhelming, <em> ringing </em>, like something he couldn’t reach but was forced still to witness, like something that reached out and squeezed all the air out of your lungs, like the end of the world, like the end of the world, and he struggled to raise his hands to his ears to cover them, gravity heavy amidst the pure force of it, blood phasing in his body like it didn’t belong there, tether somewhere deep and far beyond shaken as a harp string, something in him falling down and down and up and down and up and down and below—-</p><p>—he was lying on the ground, there was concrete under his head and he could feel that his hat had fallen somewhere behind him.</p><p>He sat up, shaky, dizzy, with the sound of it all still <em> ringing </em>in his ears. Thirteen Thieves stood clustered around him, still adorned with earmuffs, a strange mixture of concern and exasperation on their faces.</p><p>“What the. Fuck. Was that?”</p><p>Esme Ramsey shook her head, and offered him a hand.</p><p>“A curse, dipshit. One of many. We’ve got no shortage of them here. Let’s get you some water.”</p>
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